Paul Bew, Baron Bew

Paul Anthony Elliott Bew, Baron Bew (born 1950, in Belfast)cite news|url=http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,5500,1164709,00.html|title=Paul Bew: Belfast's history man|publisher="The Guardian"|date=2004-03-09|accessdate=2008-03-06] is a Northern Irish historian. He has worked at Queen's University Belfast since 1979, and is currently Professor of Irish Politics, a position he has held since 1991.

Career

Academic career

Bew attended Campbell College, Belfast as a youth, before studying for his BA and PhD at Cambridge University. His first book, "Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82" was a revisionist study that challenged nationalist historiography by examining not only the clash between landowners and tenants, but the conflict between large and small tenants as well. His third book, a short study of Charles Stewart Parnell, challenged some of the arguments of the award-winning biography of Parnell by F. S. L. Lyons, though Lyons, one of the "doyens" of modern Irish history, acknowledged the young historian's arguments by stating that "Nothing Dr Bew writes is without interest."cite news|url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/fost02_.html|author=Roy Foster|title=Partnership of loss|publisher="London Review of Books"|date=2007-12-13|accessdate=2008-03-06]

In 2007, Oxford University Press published Bew's "Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006", which forms part of the "Oxford History of Modern Europe" series. The book has received positive reviews. [cite news|url=http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/eoghan-harris/badly-needed-corrective-to-vilification-of-long-fellow-1200456.html|author=Eoghan Harris|title=Badly needed corrective to vilification of Long Fellow|publisher="Irish Independent"|date=2007-10-21|accessdate=2008-03-06] [cite news|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/history/article2871405.ece|title=Not all stout and oysters|publisher="The Times"|author=Michael Burleigh|date=2007-11-18|accessdate=2008-03-07]

Bew also acted as a historical advisor to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry between 1998 and 2001. [cite journal|last=Bew|first=Paul|title=The role of the historical adviser and the Bloody Sunday Tribunal|journal=Historical Research|volume=78|issue=199|pages=113–127|url=http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2005.00240.x|year=2005|doi=10.1111/j.1468-2281.2005.00240.x ]

Political involvement

Bew's political stance has changed somewhat over the years. In a 2004 interview for "The Guardian", he stated that "While my language was more obviously leftwing in the 1970s than today, that sympathy has always been there". As a young man, Bew participated in the People's Democracy marches and was occasionally identified with the Workers' Party. Later, Bew served as an adviser to David Trimble. Trimble and Bew are both signatories to the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society, [cite web|url=http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/signatories.asp?pageid=36|title=Signatories to the Statement of Principles|publisher=Henry Jackson Society|accessdate=2008-03-06] which has been characterised as a neoconservative organisation. [cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/nov/21/foreignpolicy.iraq|author=David Clark|title=The neoconservative temptation beckoning Britain's bitter liberals|publisher="The Guardian"|date=2005-11-21|accessdate=2008-03-06]

Professor Bew's contributions to the Good Friday Agreement process were acknowledged with an appointment to the House of Lords as a life peer in February 2007.cite news|url=http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0215/breaking42.htm|title=Belfast academic becomes lord|publisher="The Irish Times"|date=2007-02-15|accessdate=2008-03-06] He was gazetted as Baron Bew, of Donegore in the County of Antrim on 26 March 2007, and sits as a crossbencher.

Personal

Bew is married to Greta Jones, a history professor at the University of Ulster, with whom he has one son.

Published works

*cite book|title=Land and the National Question in Ireland, 1858-82|year=1979|publisher=Gill & Macmillan
*cite book|title=The State in Northern Ireland, 1921-72: Political Forces and Social Class|year=1979|publisher=Manchester University Press
*cite book|title=C.S. Parnell|year=1980|publisher=Gill & Macmillan
*cite book|title=Sean Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland, 1945-66|year=1982|publisher=Gill & Macmillan (with Henry Patterson)
*cite book|title=The British State and the Ulster Crisis: From Wilson to Thatcher|year=1985|publisher=Verso Books (with Henry Patterson)
*cite book|title=Conflict and Conciliation in Ireland, 1890-1910: Parnellites and Radical Agrarians|year=1987|publisher=Clarendon Press
*cite book|title=The Dynamics of Irish Politics|year=1989|publisher=Lawrence & Wishart (with Henry Patterson and Ellen Hazelkorn)
*cite book|title=Between War and Peace: The Political Future of Northern Ireland|year=1997|publisher=Lawrence & Wishart
*cite book|title=Northern Ireland 1921-2001: Political Power and Social Classes |year=2002|publisher=Serif
*cite book|title=Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism, 1912-1916|year=1994|publisher=Clarendon Press
*cite book|title=John Redmond|year=1996|publisher=Dundalgan Press
*cite book|title=Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles, 1968-99|year=1999|publisher=Gill & Macmillan (with Gordon Gillespie)
*cite book|title=The Making and Remaking of the Good Friday Agreement|year=2007|publisher=The Liffey Press
*cite book|title=Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006|year=2007|publisher=Oxford University Press

References

ee also

* List of Northern Ireland Members of the House of Lords

External links

* [http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Staff/Bew/ Paul Bew's homepage at Queen's University Belfast]